The Problem with Healer Feedback, and requested changes

[Shurrikhan]

Rather than having 'more burst healing tool' added each expansion for the Pure healers, more ways to restore smaller amounts, but more often, would probably work better. There's a reason I found Curtain Call so much easier on AST than WHM, and it wasn't just 'well they have like 4 regens'. It was that their healing tools (Star, CO, CU, Horoscope) are all 60s CDs. WHM just doesn't have any good 'short CD tools', cos it relies on the lilies for its design. Which is fine, but damn when you're out of lilies in highend content you're back to playing ARR.

That's another funny thing, isn't it? Especially prior to Lillies' being hastened to a 20s CD, barrier healers (or, especially, all but WHM) all had better (or, more granular) ways to deal with minor healing needs at no uptime cost.

WHM just doesn't have any good 'short CD tools', cos it relies on the lilies for its design.

Which may just be a matter of splitting some of its oGCD burst tools (e.g., two charges of Tetra at just 400p each and half the recast time)? If we're working with a fixed budget, that seems to be all that's possible. Else, we could siphon the any excess/flavor strength from its GCD heals towards oGCDs, but that would thereby increase the job's maximum combined DPS+HPS under optimized conditions, a definite buff.

Aside: The Stormblood recuperation system (at its foundation, more flexible than ShB-EW Lilies, though horribly undertuned and in need of optional spending instead) was aimed at hastening abilities in such a way, but, as a recuperation system, still required that GCD healing be spent to see its benefits; it otherwise considered WHM already balanced until such time as GCD healing was necessary, which then really just meant that WHM was supposed to gradually gain advantage in healing-intense situations. I actually prefer that atop any other system by which to supply 3+ mobile GCDs per minute --say, a shorter DoT and each DoT you cast grants a stack of a buff, up to 3, by which your next heal can be cancelled via movement to be instant-cast instead [otherwise doesn't consume the buff stack]-- and an empowerable means of bankable burst damage as that doesn't require the bloat of separate Lily spells... but that still leaves the issue of what levels of per-execute potency would tend to better fit content, being neither so small as to take an extra cast no so large as to be excessive.

Hmmm.

[ForsakenRoe]

If any healer could do with 'increase the job's maximum combined DPS+HPS under optimized conditions', let's be real, it's WHM. Back when Misery became DPS neutral, I had a shortlist of things I hoped for with WHM. Misery being 'less DPS taxing' (my method was by making it an OGCD, thereby changing it to be only 30p loss, easily made up for by raidbuffs), Assize 2 charges (so you could hold one for healing purposes with small DPS loss, due to not being in raidbuff), Tetra 2 charges (at 700p, AST's Essential averages to 700 and has 40s CD, come on SE), and most importantly for the point here, Lilybell reduced either to a 120s CD, or to 90s CD, with 3 stacks. At the time Macrocosmos was all the rage in the memes because of P3S, and my thinking was that we can make Lilybell competitive with Macro not on power (there's no matching it), but 'availability'. If it's up twice as often as Macro, it's more versatile as a tool, whereas Macro does one thing, but very very well.

Lilybell Duration is nice and all, but I only get to use 3 of them during P8S whether they last 15 or 20s. If it were a 90s CD though, it'd have been INSANE for this tier, with all the raidwide-bleeds, it'd be up for so many more of them. It'd be 1200p total healing, with Asylum totalling 900p. OFC, this doesn't address the issue that we have too much healing power and not enough to use it on, hence the idea that we give WHM Afflatus: Sanctuary or whatever (and AST some shields too), so we can change from 'Lily heal that will, when combined with the cohealer's response tool, almost certainly overheal' to 'Lily Shield which will definitely be 100% value (could make it so 'if shield remains when duration expires, heal for that amount' for true 100% value), won't be overwritten in content where having it matters (because people at that level of content know not to overwrite each other's shields), and due to being DPS neutral via lily system, is an indirect RDPS gain for the team, since the SCH no longer has to cast Succor there'. Only issue is, that gained GCD for the SCH will be attributed to the SCH on the funny website, not the WHM, so people will complain still.

'Lily shield + HPS pump OGCD' synergizes better within your own kit than 'Lily HPS pump + HPS pump OGCD', I think. Way too easy to end up overhealing if your tools to work with are big pumpy healing ones like PI, Rapture, Asylum, Lilybell, Medica 2 (god forbid)

[Shurrikhan]

If any healer could do with 'increase the job's maximum combined DPS+HPS under optimized conditions', let's be real, it's WHM. Back when Misery became DPS neutral, I had a shortlist of things I hoped for with WHM. Misery being 'less DPS taxing' (my method was by making it an OGCD, thereby changing it to be only 30p loss, easily made up for by raidbuffs), Assize 2 charges (so you could hold one for healing purposes with small DPS loss, due to not being in raidbuff), Tetra 2 charges (at 700p, AST's Essential averages to 700 and has 40s CD, come on SE), and most importantly for the point here, Lilybell reduced either to a 120s CD, or to 90s CD, with 3 stacks. At the time Macrocosmos was all the rage in the memes because of P3S, and my thinking was that we can make Lilybell competitive with Macro not on power (there's no matching it), but 'availability'. If it's up twice as often as Macro, it's more versatile as a tool, whereas Macro does one thing, but very very well.

Oh, agreed. For sure. Especially if this were the patch before the Lily buffs. My focus was more on just the kind of thing you're doing with Lily here. If something has on-paper parity but the difference in how well particular tools fit the actual contexts, then we either need to allow for some on-paper imbalance to compensate or we need to differently split up the less fit powers to bring their in-practice performance nearer to expectation.

Sorry that my latest posts have been distracted. Only time I've had to post, let alone collect my thoughts, has been small breaks between tutoring sessions.

[Renathras]

Incidentally, you missed neutral sect, so this part "They have no party shields and no high uptime mitigation potential, though AST's isn't terrible because it's up frequently " , so I would say that "isn't terrible" doesn't apply in many cases.

I...didn't?

Note I said party shields. Single target shields don't affect the whole party. (I'm not trying to be snippy, that's just what I mean by "party shields"). So like, if there's damage coming in that will one-shot people, SGE can use Holos, Zoe + Eukrasian Prognosis, and Panhaima. SCH can use Seraph + Consolation, Succor, or far better, Recitation + Adlo + Deploy, and people often forget but Expedience also has a damage reduction component...and it lasts for a lengthy 20 seconds. And they can use some of these in conjunction with each other as well as with their damage reduction CDs. SCH can pair Soil with Fey Illumination (for magic type damage; also increases the size of that Spreadlo shield), SGE can stack Kerachole + Holos (Kera and Tauro don't stack, but they both will stack with Holos)

So they have mitigation that affects the whole party, including ones that are up every 30 seconds, and they have both CD based party shields and spamable party shields that can be used at any time (Succor and Eukrasian Prognosis can be used at any time unless you're outright OOM)

Conversely, AST has 2 single party shields and a 10% damage reduction every 1 minute. WHM has the same shielding (a slightly stronger 500 potency vs 400) and the same damage reduction...once every 2 minutes. While AST's is up frequently ENOUGH to be up for most major mechanics you need to reduce the damage from, WHM's tends to miss every other (every second) major damage spike mechanic. AST's is up JUUUST frequently enough to not have this problem all the time. Each of them can save exactly 2 people from "you don't have enough HP to survive this attack" per minute. And the spamable Adlo and EuDiagnosis (non-crit) generate 580 potency barriers vs Benison's 500 and Intersection's 400...

Oh, I'm stupid. Neutral Sect. XD

Yeah, best part is, when I typed that up, I was thinking AST had an AOE barrier, but then I was looking through their abilities and didn't see it outright (I have said many times AST is the healer I don't play - have it at 90, but haven't messed with it and mostly CT Roulette, Cutscene Roulette, and Frontline Roulette leveled the thing), and so I was like "Well, I don't want to say it has something it doesn't" and so removed it. But yeah, add Neutral Sect's 312.5 potency AOE healing AND they can slap an additional 400 potency heal on whoever the two weakest party members are to ensure they survive just in case. It's a 120 sec CD, but...it still exists.

So yeah, AST is basically a "Barrier-lite" healer.

So WHM is the only actual non-Barrier healer in the game.

POINT: We don't have a Pure/Barrier split. We have a WHM/everyone else split.

EDIT:

Besides, nobody takes AST over WHM for mitigation of all things.

I mean, yes but also no. The answer's a bit nuanced.

Even IF WHM had the same party buffs as AST, AST would still be the meta choice because it has the party buffs AND mitigation potential. The slightly higher personal DPS that WHM brings wouldn't make up for that. With AST you get 0.5x a second Barrier/mitigation healer AND you get party buffs.

SCH is the given choice because it has both. AST and SGE are roughly interchangeable in the second slot because SGE offers a bit more additional protection for prog while AST offers more party damage and half the mitigation anyway. WHM has literally none of the things the meta cares about.

I do agree that SCH/SGE works well because it's easy to not overlap incompatible shields. Adlo > Diagnosis > Prognosis > Succor is the order of precedence, which arguably also favors the strongest shields anyway, and Adlo's crit secondary shield, EuDiagnosis' crit secondary shield, Holos, Panhaima, and Consolation/Seraph shields (and Neutral Sect) all stack just fine.

Again: This ends with the result of it's not Pure/Barrier, it's WHM/everyone else.

Consider, Medica 2 ticks are 150 now (god i remember when they were 50, and it lasted 30s...), Soil and Kerachole both tick for 100 per tick. 15s duration, 30s CD. For the (arguably) low cost of just two lost Energy Drains per minute, a SCH/SGE comp can have 100% uptime on '66% of the potency of Medica 2', but without having to spend 4 Glares worth of potency (or MP) on maintaining it. It's ridiculous how much HPS the 'barrier healers' have, and with the change that happened a while back on the naughty website, where Mit now counts as HPS, often I see logs where I (the WHM) am doing 2/3 or even HALF of the 'effective HPS' of the Barrier healer. Maybe that's me being trash and a bad cohealer, but I also have the same happen in reverse when I'm on SGE, they have 66%ish of the healing of me

And I think the issue is simple: Healing throughput only helps if there's healing to do, but Mit ALWAYS has some effect. And if the Mit is strong, the Healing required is lessened. Weird isnt it

Exactly!

That's why I noted that raw healing always has to be LARGER than mit + healing because mit has additional effects (it's always useful as you say, but it also allows people to survive things that otherwise would kill them, and raw healing doesn't revive the dead), meaning to be balanced, raw Pure healers need to do something like 125% to 150% the healing of the Barrier healers. The problem is, the Barrier healers can arguably output comparable healing to the Pure healers AND mitigation. AST can do the Pure healing bit but also provide some decent mitigation, and stupidly has better MP economy than WHM while doing so.

It seems that WHM should have SOMETHING going for it. Either the biggest heals OR the best MP economy when spamming them OR more mitigation.

"It has Cure 3" seems not to be a valid answer, especially since Thin Air was neutered to curtail its usability in high impact situations. And Lilybell, Macrocosmos, and Panhaima all EXIST anyway, somewhat neutering Cure 3's use case of "spam during periods of high damage to save the party from pulses/waves of high damage". NidhogEx was the "When I learned to love Cure 3 fight" for this reason, but all those abilities, in addition to other oGCD tools combined with them, now exist which didn't then. Back then, you had Soil/Collective + Thin Air Cure3 spam. Now you have all these other tools to the point a SGE could - at level in entry level 90 gear - soloheal ZodEx's multi-hit healing checks as long as you killed him before that very last one (9 hitter) before the Enrage. Which, if you were solo healing to pick up a 5th DPS, your party should have been able to do.

Also, I agree with you on a lot here, though I think mitigation, not shields, is what should be healer-wide. Or at least more NORMALIZED - every healer should have at least one up every 1 minute, and ideally a stronger one up every 2 mins and a weaker one up every 1 min. Like imagine if Consolation had a 5% mitigation when used and Collective was 5% while Neutral was reworked to remove the barrier but provide 10% (basically inverting WHM's 60 sec boosting AOE heal potency + weaker mitigation vs 2 min boosting healing done and 10%, AST's would be 60 sec boosted healing done with the HoT with the lesser 5% mitigation while the 2 min would be the AOE healing boost and 10%).

As we learned from P1-8S (if we didn't already know it before), mitigation is king and when the party isn't mitigating, the healers who can't are blamed for people dying. It'd be nice if all the healers had those tools. We'd still get blamed, but at least we'd have the agency to actually do something about it.

[Rilifane]

I mean, yes but also no. The answer's a bit nuanced.

Even IF WHM had the same party buffs as AST, AST would still be the meta choice because it has the party buffs AND mitigation potential. The slightly higher personal DPS that WHM brings wouldn't make up for that. With AST you get 0.5x a second Barrier/mitigation healer AND you get party buffs.

SCH is the given choice because it has both. AST and SGE are roughly interchangeable in the second slot because SGE offers a bit more additional protection for prog while AST offers more party damage and half the mitigation anyway. WHM has literally none of the things the meta cares about.

I do agree that SCH/SGE works well because it's easy to not overlap incompatible shields. Adlo > Diagnosis > Prognosis > Succor is the order of precedence, which arguably also favors the strongest shields anyway, and Adlo's crit secondary shield, EuDiagnosis' crit secondary shield, Holos, Panhaima, and Consolation/Seraph shields (and Neutral Sect) all stack just fine.[/hb]

The answer for what is meta and why is usually lacking a lot of nuance.
If people go for strong comps it's "Would we survive? Yes -> More deeps" - which ironically meant that people switched off AST early tier when mitigation would matter most because their buffs weren't nearly as strong from the lack of gear of the rest so WHM brought less mitigation on paper but more than enough to survive in practice and the reliable dps.
There's also a long list of mechanics or chains of mechanics where you can't use CU for mitigation because it wouldn't catch enough people. Especially on the problematic mechanics that are most likely to kill people from damage taken like Ruby 5, Cachexia 1, towers & birds, all Harvests, Hippo jumps, Fourfold, Snake 2, NA1/2 except for stack, towers. That often leaves huge gaps when you can't use it fur survival.
You can't rely on CU for survival in these cases because you'll not catch everyone and it needs additional single target shields/ mit from someone else for them to make it work which isn't always available or feasible to apply in time on the right target.
AST is nowhere near a second barrier healer. WHM is lacking mitigation but AST isn't that much better off to consider it the healer that brings "half the mitigation", that's just exaggerated.


And the priority for shields in terms of opportunity cost/ efficiency would be:
EDiag (since SGE gets a damage return from Toxikon) > Adlo > Physick (since SCH fairy keeps healing) > Diagnosis
ET Succor + EProg works just fine most of the time too, if someone really doesn't want to coordinate properly then you're, Succor + Prog works and is easy. But I have yet to see a single time when we both need to spam GCD aoe heals, including on the "cursed boss for SGE/ SCH".
But for ease of use, Adlo + Diagnosis and Succor + Prognosis does the job.

[Renathras]

The answer for what is meta and why is usually lacking a lot of nuance.

With this, I totally agree.

But the reason WHM is so non-meta is it doesn't win any of those arguments. SGE does comparable DPS to WHM while also offering additional benefits; and is arguably about as easy to play once you get how it works. AST does comparable healing to WHM while also offering additional benefits. SCH does comparable damage and comparable healing to WHM while also offering additional benefits.

This varies during the tier and based on gear, but WHM's personal damage is not significantly greater ENOUGH to make up for the difference. You always want at least one mitigator early in the tier because of lower ilevels and that raidwides now seem tuned to where they do absolutely one-shot the weak Jobs (Healers and Casters) outright if not mitigated. This pretty much guarantees you will want at least one of SCH, SGE, or in a pinch, AST. Because of all its benefits, SCH is pretty much the in demand choice if you can get your hands on one. After that, AST is the only one that does significantly less damage than WHM. Because SGE does comparable damage, SGE is actively competing with WHM for the non-SCH spot in early gear levels. And as people gear up and AST buffs become more powerful, AST moves up into that competition since its raid damage contribution is now competitive or better than WHM and SGE's bulk damage.

Right now on the forbidden site for P5S, WHM, despite being the most played overall, is the least represented at the top end. SCH/AST is still the meta, with SCH/SGE being an entirely functional alternative.

[Rilifane]

That's unfortunately a problem WHM had for years ever since AST got added. It has absolutely no defining feature. Starting at level 1 and being the easiest to play isn't a good defining feature nor should being the classic FF poster child healer and the resulting popularity of it be considered as a class being perfectly fine by SE.
Its personal DPS was always lowest the moment everyone got a tiny bit of gear and from then on it was the worst choice for the rest of the expansion, it had nothing special or any reason you'd take it over another healer. And with mitigation playing a bigger role in EW than in ShB, where you could easily get away with playing Diurnal/ WHM it fell even further behind.
AST mitigation is fairly bad compared to SGE and SCH and not enough in a pinch early tier which is why saw practically no AST/ WHM clears unless you really have an outstanding group that mitigates the hell out of every scratch but it brings better dps and that's its saving grace. It also helps that Yoshi practically announced that you shouldn't even think about taking two shield healers.
So we have AST + SGE/ SCH as the meta, with AST/ SCH winning for dps - as always and the 2min burst meta made it even worse. Definitely doesn't get one bit tiring, nope.

I wonder what would have happened if Yoshi hadn't openly discouraged taking two shield healers into content.
Considering SGE/ SCH even beats AST/ SCH on a few fights at the top end, it probably wouldn't be a considered a meme comp that you just take if nothing else is available and real competition for AST/ SCH, leaving WHM in the dust even more. Because the fact that PFs and statics usually lock to shield/ pure combination definitely helps WHM getting a spot but at this point it's like the participation trophy phys ranged get for providing the 5% bonus.
I really wish they'd stop treating participating trophies that barely keeps a class/ role afloat as functioning class design.

[ForsakenRoe]

If Yoshi hadn't heavily implied you'd want 1 pure, 1 barrier, SCH SGE would be viewed as a 'real comp' (as it's power level proves it is), rather than a 'meme comp'. And this would have a great side effect: it'd show even more that A: WHM is suffering bad and needs a fresh look designwise, and B: the Pure/Barrier split is a sad joke and should be reverted

And I did consider 'mit is the thing that is given to all healers', and it'd work too. But I like the idea of all healers being able to throw up nonstacking GCD shields, because that way it opens the door for more design in fights. You know how Ifrit's knockback wave can be negated if you have a shield that reduces the damage to 0? As I've probably mused before at many times, we could have 'shield checks' in the same way that something like Seat of Sacrifice has a 'pure HPS check'. And I want to bring Stoneskin back, because WHM hotbars have plenty of room to do so

[Renathras]

That's unfortunately a problem...

Agreed with this post, but I'll note that SCH/SGE has been taken to many fights and isn't considered a meme comp. The only meme comp/comp no one uses is WHM/WHM.

Arguably one of the reasons WHM is prevalent at all is that the raw number of WHM players probably close to equals the number of SCH + AST + SGE. I don't think it's QUITE that, but WHMs are probably something like 40% of healers. So even the elitist (not elite) meta-chasers have to settle for them in their PF groups because they'd rarely get a party otherwise. If AST was as played as WHM, you just wouldn't see WHM at all.

One thing that is kind of interesting to me, though, is WHM/SGE seems to be a thing. I noticed in the top P5S runs, there were several groups running that. No idea why, but I guess it works for them. /shrug

B: the Pure/Barrier split is a sad joke and should be reverted

I mean, let's be honest: That's already apparent. WHM was not QUITE but not FAR FROM blacklisted in 6.0 because of how much they had to crutch/chad (depending on your perspective) their co-healers to be competent at all. SCH/AST/SGE paired with WHM's were essentially solo-healing the fights - SAVAGE fights - which says even more how much Barrier Healer HPS is overtuned and how WHM was effectively redundant.

But I like the idea of all healers being able to throw up nonstacking GCD shields, because that way it opens the door for more design in fights.

Maybe, but I feel like this is why they wouldn't do it.

They don't allow shield stacking precisely because it can cause some funny business with cheesing mechanics, and they don't really want that. Because of diminishing returns and multiplicative (rather than additive) stacking, mitigation has a far lower risk of that. Sure you CAN mitigate the heck out of a mechanic, but then (a) you've used up all your mitigation at once and (b) diminishing returns prevent outright negating entire mechanics. I don't disagree it could lead to fun mechanics, but that's what the Devs are...largely avoiding... <_<

[ForsakenRoe]

They don't allow shield stacking precisely because it can cause some funny business with cheesing mechanics, and they don't really want that. Because of diminishing returns and multiplicative (rather than additive) stacking, mitigation has a far lower risk of that. Sure you CAN mitigate the heck out of a mechanic, but then (a) you've used up all your mitigation at once and (b) diminishing returns prevent outright negating entire mechanics. I don't disagree it could lead to fun mechanics, but that's what the Devs are...largely avoiding... <_<

Context matters. Negating the Damage Down in E10S for the wall-orbs (for uptime) is clearly cheese and not intended. Negating the Ifrit KB via shielding is memes, because it's not a threat, just a mild inconvenience. Negating the same Ifrit KB, but in UWU, is the intended strategy for the fight. It's 'cheesing the mechanics' only because the design wasn't made with it in mind. But if it WAS made with it in mind, then it's no longer cheese. It's the intended solution. There may need to be a clear indication that 'hey if you have a shield up for this mechanic, you can negate it/not get a debuff/it's a good idea to' for newer players to understand the concept, but maybe not. After all, how many people completely ignore all the interject-able casts in the game